


these are the things we lost

by folignos



Category: Hockey RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/folignos/pseuds/folignos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's in Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>The message comes to Sidney all the way from the top, higher even than Bettman, Mario tells him." Captain America AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	these are the things we lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indigostohelit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/gifts).



> IT'S CAT'S BIRTHDAY.
> 
> i'm so sorry about this.
> 
> title from bastille's 'things we lost in the fire'. one day i will title a fic something that isn't bastille lyrics. today is not that day.
> 
> thanks to aaron for being an excellent jenna-substitute and fixing my commas

He's in Pittsburgh.

The message comes to Sidney all the way from the top, higher even than Bettman, Mario tells him. 

Sidney polishes his shield. There's a scuff just by the rim, barely there, almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye.

Sidney's eyes are as highly trained as the rest of him.

Mario is looking at him. Sidney is looking at the shield.

'Okay,' Sidney says. He breathes in the smell of the metal polish. He works by sense memory.  _Wax on, wax off_ , his brain supplies helpfully. 

He's going to oil the leather straps, next. He always does. Polish the metal, oil the leather, rinse and repeat until his hands are tingling with the sensation.

'Sidney,' Mario says. 'It's not him.'

Sidney blinks, breathes, does not look up.

'When do I fly out?' Sidney asks.

-

The flight is longer than Sidney would like it to be. He spends it adjusting the buckles on his shield, on his suit. 

He has the name of an operative he has to meet as soon as the wheels touch the ground; Ovechkin. He also has orders.

_Do not engage._

One of the buckles on his belt is too tight. He tugs at it, grimly.

Flower is asleep in the pilot's seat. Sidney listens to the reassuring hum of autopilot. The buckle loosens.

-

Pittsburgh is rainy. Sidney can smell the steel from half a century ago thick in the air.

Ovechkin has a thick overcoat and a missing tooth. He calls Sidney  _Captain Crosby_ with a sideways smirk.

He has fourteen knives and three guns hidden on his person that Sidney can see. He would bet his shield that there are at least a half dozen more that he can't.

He takes them to a safe house, codename Consol. Flower suits up in uncharacteristic silence and hits the skies with a grin.

Sidney only doesn't wear a hole in the floorboards pacing up and down through sheer force of will. Ovechkin gives him a thin cardboard folder.

Blurry photos. A single, solitary sheet of paper with solid black rectangles hiding half the text. Sidney has the highest possible security clearance you can get.

He tells this to Ovechkin. Ovechkin shrugs. 'Is not my fault you not level seven,' he says. It's so cold Sidney can see his breath curling out between words. 

'There's no such thing as level seven,' Sidney says. 

Ovechkin just shrugs again, flips the collar of his coat up and looks out the window.

Sidney glares at him and looks back at the photos. There are half a dozen of them, shaky with movement and distance, clearly taken from hundreds of metres away.

He makes out a black mask. Thick boots. A silver glove on one hand. Sidney shivers, and pretends it's from the cold that he barely feels. 

- 

In downtown Pittsburgh, an SUV is riddled with bullets, left smoking on its roof. It bursts into half hearted flames. There are no survivors. 

A ghost disappears into the shadows. 

Flower perches on the roof of a building and dips his head in despair. 

He'd tried so hard to believe that the Director had been wrong. 

- 

Sidney's phone rings.  

Both he and Ovechkin pretend they didn't flinch. 

'It's him,' Flower says, flat, blunt. Unforgiving.

Sidney closes his eyes. 

'No it's not,' Sidney says. 'It hasn't been for seventy years.' 

'Sid,' Flower says. Sidney cuts him off. 

'We have  _orders_ ,' Sidney says, sharp. 

There is nothing but the crackle of static on the line. 'I'm coming back in,' Flower says. 'ETA seven minutes.' 

'Copy that,' Sidney says, and hangs up.

- 

Mario video-calls them when they've been in Pittsburgh for three days. Sidney takes a deep breath and remains calm when he tells Mario that they have no leads, just a trail of dead bodies leading back to Russia. 

Mario tells them to keep their heads up. Sidney nods, and disconnects the call.

- 

They've been in Pittsburgh for seven days. Their target has killed twenty three people. 

Sidney just wants to know why.

- 

On day eight, he breaks. Suits up while Ovechkin sleeps, while Flower's in the air, and he heads for downtown. He's not as good at fading into the wallpaper of shadows like Ge- like the target is, but he does okay.

He hears gunfire and breaks into a run without even thinking. 

- 

Their target is standing on top of a car. Behind him, a building burns to the ground. 

His hair is long and falls into his face. Half his mask has been broken off. It lies shattered in front of him. 

Sidney is a hundred feet away, but he can still see how bloodshot the target's eyes are. 

His hand clenches tight around the grip of his shield. He takes one step forward. 

-

Back at Consol, Ovechkin is awake and cursing. 

Sidney's forgotten cell phone buzzes under his pillow.

-

Sidney takes another step. 

There is rubble underneath his boots. 

The target stares at him. Dull sunlight glints off his silver arm, off the red star on the shoulder. It creaks when he balls both hands into fists. 

Sidney takes another step. 

And another.

The target reacts. 

Sidney's fast. He's the world's first (and arguably only) super soldier. He's unparalleled in speed, in strength, in intelligence. 

Except. 

Except the target moves and Sidney feels like he's reacting in slow motion. 

He lands exactly one punch before the target pulls a knife and carves a thin red line from elbow to shoulder. 

The rest of the mask falls off, and Sidney loses the last little scrap of denial that had been holding him steady.

- 

Here is a list of things Sidney knows about Evgeni Malkin:

  * He died in Germany in 1944
  * He is standing in front of Sidney, holding a knife in each hand



Sidney blocks one knife with his forearm, sends it spinning away. He ducks, sidesteps, backs away. 

There is fire in Evgeni's eyes and blood on his face. 

Sidney fumbles for the straps on his mask, tugs frantically at the buckle sitting under his right ear. He hears the tear of leather and doesn't care. 

He pulls the mask off and drops it to the ground and looks at Evgeni and says nothing. 

Evgeni stops. The knife falls to his side. 

He says something in guttural Russian. 

_Я знаю, вы._  

Sidney doesn't speak Russian.  

Evgeni turns and flees. 

It takes everything Sidney has not to follow him. 

-

Flower shouts at him for thirteen minutes. Sidney catalogues all the ways his soft French accent gets broader when he's angry. 

'What does " _Я знаю, вы"_ mean?' Sidney asks Ovechkin, skulking in a dark corner of the room. He's still angry Sidney managed to sneak out on him earlier.

'Accent terrible,' Ovechkin informs him. 'Disgrace to language.' 

'What does it mean?' Sidney's hands tighten on the back of a wooden chair

Ovechkin pauses. 'I know you.' 

The chair splinters. 

-

On the other side of Pittsburgh, the Winter Soldier sits in a metal chair and snarls. 

_Who was that man?_

_He is not important,_ a man in a white coat tells him. 

_But I knew him_ , the Winter Soldier says. They wrap adamantium bands around his wrists and elbows.  _I knew him._

_-_

For the first time since waking up after the plane crash, Sidney dreams. 

He dreams about a clean sheet of ice and a thick Russian accent, clear as day across the snow drifts. He dreams about being a child again. 

He dreams of clumsy teenage hands on skin and clumsy teenage lips on his.

He dreams about the war. He dreams about watching everyone else marching away in perfect time.

He dreams about long needles and sharp, cold pain in every fibre. 

He dreams of Geno. Kind and affable and always grinning softly down at Sidney, even after the serum. 

He wakes up with cramp in his gut and that old hollow feeling in his chest. 

- 

Flower calls him from the air two days later. Another sighting.

Sidney hits the stairs at a run, sliding his shield onto his back and he's not pulling his mask on until he's at street level. 

Flower flies above with directions. Sidney runs until his chest is tight. 

Evgeni,  _Geno,_ is standing tall on a bridge. He hasn't replaced his mask, and thick strands of hair whip around his bare face in the wind.

Sidney realises in that moment that he never really believed Geno died on that mountain.

Flower lands behind him, wings curling back in on themselves. His face is blank behind the flight goggles. Ovechkin joins them a moment later. There's something like recognition on his face before it goes as blank as Flower's 

Geno says something in Russian, and Ovechkin's face twists. Geno says it again. 

'What's he saying?' Sidney asks. Ovechkin doesn't answer immediately.  

Geno says it again. It sounds like a question.

'Why do I know you?' Ovechkin says, translating. 'He wants to know your name.' 

'You know we're not allowed to use our civilian names in the field, Cap,' Flower warns. His arms are folded, but his tone is sympathetic. 

Sidney twists his mouth in frustration. 'We grew up together,' he says, looking to Ovechkin to translate. 'A long, long time ago.' 

Geno frowns and it's so familiar Sidney's breath catches in his throat. He speaks. 

'Where?' Ovechkin asks.

'Canada. Nova Scotia.'

Geno chews on his lip. He looks like he's thinking hard.

'He doesn't remember,' Ovechkin says.

Sidney takes a breath, and then a risk. 'Your name is Evgeni,' he says. 

Not a flicker of recognition from Geno. 

'Geno,' Sidney says, and he knows the desperation in his voice is thick and obvious, but he can't not try. He  _can't._

_'_ Who are you?' Ovechkin translates. 

'I can't tell you,' Sidney says. 'I want to but I just  _can't_. I have  _orders.'_

Geno looks right at Sidney after Ovechkin has translated everything.  

'He says he has orders too,' Ovechkin says. 'Can you tell him nothing?' 

Flower is standing firm behind him. 

Sidney has a vague memory of childhood. Of Geno's mother, always kind, always smiling. Just like her son.

'His mother,' Sidney says. 'His mother used to call him Zheyna.' 

Ovechkin curls his lip at the mispronounciation, but he doesn't need to translate, because somethig in Geno's expression cracks open suddenly. 

'Sidney,' he says, and his accent is so thick, thicker than Sidney's ever heard, but he doesn't care, because he finally sounds like Geno. 

Sidney smiles, and pulls his mask off, and watches the recognition blooming across Geno's face. It's like being eight years old and playing in the snow with his new next door neighbour. It's like home.

**Author's Note:**

> the russian is probably wildly incorrect. i apologise.
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://toewses.tumblr.com) for more hockey hijinks!


End file.
